


The Physical Impossibility of Flight

by One_Hundred_Zeros



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Happy ending though, M/M, One Shot, Retirementlock, Sherlock Holmes and Bees, Sussex, gratuitous literary references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 00:21:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1622273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/One_Hundred_Zeros/pseuds/One_Hundred_Zeros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are moments in life when one realizes that a story is beginning (do you see right there right then a story of us in that space of time in that white-walled room in those first words - here, use mine).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Physical Impossibility of Flight

**I. pity this busy monster, manunkind**

'Sentimentality is not an advantage, Sherlock.'

 

Mycroft first told him that when he was twelve and Sherlock was just five, a boy dark-haired and pale-eyed and precocious. Sherlock had never forgotten those words in the almost two decades since then, the oldest song in his mind palace - a gramophone record in that street-corner dance studio he discerned once and desired for ever. At age five, his brother's words to him were nothing he did not understand, but they had served as confirmation for what he already knew.

 

Sherlock Holmes cannot love and, in keeping the equivalence of the world, cannot be loved.

 

So he lived (believed) in the almost two decades until John Watson limped into his life, a man broken and incandescent and everything Sherlock never knew he cannot have.

 

**II. and wonder what you’ve missed**

There are moments in life when one realizes that a story is beginning (do you see right there right then a story of us in that space of time in that white-walled room in those first words - _here, use mine)._

 

John Watson is not a blaze of light - nothing quite so grand - but he is stardust bound into the orbit of the world, gathered from their light years across the universe and forged in the heart of a young star with a younger earth still heaving and changing and forming. It is the same universe that revolves around Sherlock and revolved around Charlemagne and will always revolve around every politician preacher and penitent priest and prostituted passion but that only ever has one heart and that is John.

 

(Every paragraph of every chapter of their story is going to start and end with John John John.)

 

**III. let that be my love henceforth**

It is only sixty four days later that Sherlock allows himself to think about fate, two months and three days of wild chases down London’s alleyways and the ricochet of gunfire and a man dying beneath his feet still in pain and a man without a gun in hand still deadly and a man strapped to Semtex still alive -

 

Only then does Sherlock allow himself to think about the absurd probability that they both should know Mike Stamford, about the wild impossibilities needed for the bullet never to have hit home, lodging inches above John's heart - Sherlock's heart - about how they have fallen into friendship as fiercely and strongly as only two people desperately lonely and terrified of their loneliness could - and that itself is terrifying.

 

Sherlock knows the only destiny afforded by this world is entropy, what could he hope to achieve by contemplating for ever, what does he know of that? The foolish boy-child of five who believed that sentimentality was a thing to be guarded or given away freely as he wished, he knew nothing of serendipity and chaos and the hearts of men.

 

**IV. while I thought I was learning how to live**

Moriarty was right, falling is just like flying.

 

**V. if equal affection cannot be**

People speak of selflessness as though that makes them unselfish but the only thing selflessness makes people is unfamiliar to wanting anything for themselves and Sherlock thinks that that is okay. When he returns after three years he does not say that it was three years of waiting wanting wishing because three years is three years too long - another lifetime for John, another story beginning in another universe.

 

Marry Mary. There are vows and waltzes and a dance floor. Merry Mary. Merry John. All he has are words.

 

Sherlock’s heart dies once and dies again. He still breathes.

 

In the end, there is only a quiet confession spoken when consequences are beyond him, when the aeroplane engines hum in a steady beat behind him, when all around the wind rushes through an open sky - it is the East Wind come to take him far from home, into the wilderness of strange lands, into the arms of strange peoples - and in his mind, his always unquiet mind that is suddenly quiet now, there rests the weight of silence.

 

‘I love you, John Watson.’

 

**VI. for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse**

_There is a certain lightness,_ Sherlock theorizes as he settles into the plush cream seats of the private jet, _in giving away the truth._

He is glad for John’s stunned silence, for Schrodinger's Paradox at its most exquisite - if Sherlock never hears John’s answer, never knows for _sure,_ then there will always remain the chance that John might have accepted his affections. William Sherlock Scott Holmes could live with not deducing people just this once.

 

Or so he thinks, until four minutes into the flight when Mycroft speaks down the end of his phone, and oh, this must have been what the East Wind heralded during his farewell, for Sherlock is never fated to be laid to waste in the depths of a foreign land, no, it is always London - his dear, beloved London - that is meant to witness the devastation of his heart.

 

**VII. every night and every morn**

John finds him first (between the two of them, the more courageous one was always he).

 

Mary leaves.

 

**VIII. and all was light**

Everyone leaves, eventually, but they are still there at the heart of the universe and the future spools out light-drenched and sun-shrouded and beautiful.

 

One day, out on the front porch of a house in Sussex, Sherlock - white haired with laugh lines at the corners of his eyes - looks at John and tells him about a man made of stardust (idiot) and happiness (all thanks to you) and capable of a boundless love (I love you, too).

 

One day, when they are both old and older than youth can ever comprehend, Sherlock remembers the fear of being broken - because that foolish boy-child of five believed that gramophone record of his brother’s voice in a room in his mind full of things he never knew he can have - remembers thinking that he can bear anything but loving without being loved in return.

 

One day, so many three-year lifetimes later, so many stories begun and ended and still being written, John sits with his computer and his blog and his tea and tells Sherlock about bees and their physical impossibility of flight (I know) oh, of course you do.

 

**IX. i have been learning how to die**

Moriarty was wrong in the end: flying is just like falling (in love).

 

**Author's Note:**

> Here is a list of all art and literary persons and works referenced for this piece:
> 
> Title referenced from The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Something Living (Damien Hirst).
> 
> I. referenced from Pity this Busy Monster, Manunkind (E.E. Cummings).
> 
> II. referenced from As I Walked out One Evening (W.H. Auden).
> 
> III. referenced from The Gay Science (Friedrich Nietzsche), most specifically referring to section 276 where he talks of Amor Fati, the love of fate.
> 
> IV. and IX. referenced from a quote of the same phrasing from Leonardo da Vinci.
> 
> V. referenced from The More Loving One (W.H. Auden).
> 
> VI. referenced from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot).
> 
> VII. referenced from Auguries of Innocence (William Blake).
> 
> VIII. referenced from Epitaph on Sir Isaac Newton (Alexander Pope).


End file.
